Physics 483 String Theory I
Grader: Christian Ferko
Suggested Reference: String Theory, vol. I & II by Polchinski
Location & Time: KPTC 105, M-W 9-10:20
(Yes, that 9 am start is not a typo unfortunately).
This course serves as part one of a two part introduction to
superstring theory. It is aimed at advanced
graduate students with a background in quantum field theory.
Additional
Reference
Materials:
Superstring Theory, vol.
I & II by Green, Schwarz and Witten.
D-branes
by Clifford Johnson.
String Theory and M-theory: A Modern Introduction by Becker,
Becker and Schwarz.
Some nice lecture notes on string theory by David Tong can be
found here.
Some old but good lecture notes by Paul Ginsparg on conformal
field theory can be found here.
A more recent discussion of CFT
by David Simmons-Duffin, without emphasizing the special
features seen in two dimensions, but with a focus on the
conformal bootstrap can be found here.
There are many more lectures and texts that can be found
on the arXiv.
Problem Sets:
Assignment 1
Solutions 1
Assignment 2
Solutions 2
Assignment 3
Solutions 3
Final Presentations:
Wed:
Chih-Kai Chang, RG flows and the a-theorem
Masaya Fukami, Intro to the
Ryu-Takayanagi Formula
Xucheng Gan, Resonant Tunneling
in the Cosmic Landscape
Umang Mehta, Chern-Simons
Theory and Rational CFT on Manifolds with Boundary
Friday:
Wen Han Chiu, String
Phenomenology, the Swampland and the Weak Gravity Conjecture
Ian MacCormack, Understanding WZW Theories
with Chern-Simons Theories and Vice-Versa
John Joseph Marchetta, T-duality of Open
Strings and D-branes
Colin Nancarrow, Higher-form
Symmetries Exposition
Adel Rahman, Strings, Gravity and the
World We See
Lei Su, Fractional
Quantum Hall States with Conformal Field Theories
Yitian Sun, The Black Hole Information Problem and the
AdS/CFT correspondence
Siyang
Ling, Knots and Feynman Diagrams